My Nightmare: Rotary Edition

When I think back to the spring and summer of 2007, the time I now refer to as "when this whole thing started" in respect to my exchange, a few things stick out to me: The night we wikipedia'd Ecuador for the first time, the exchange conference in May, my first email from my first host family, and my first Rotary meeting, when I met the exchange students our club was hosting and saw them give their Big Presentations.
For those of you who are not so familiar with the exchange rules, each exchange student, at some point in their exchange year, is asked to present to the Rotary club that hosts them about their home town, home state, home country, etc. We saw three different presentations, from Marie about her town in France, from Ciro about his city in Bolivia, and from Olga about her town in Germany. I brought a red spiral-bound notebook and a pen and took notes on the presentation styles, ALREADY sweating the day when it would be my turn to get up and say "Aaaalllbaaaanyyyyy" and flash through slides of Washington Park, New York City, my high school, my house, etc.


Well, a few nights ago, my host mother Cecilia called me into their bedroom and said "Sabrina, have you been to a Rotary meeting yet in February?" [Spinning through my mental datebook....] "Uh, no, I haven't," I said, so she offered to call my counselor and get me in for the meeting the night of Feb. 26th. I knew I'd have to do my presentation when I went, because I'd been scheduled to do it in January but there was a conflict on my night, and so we'd postponed it but never set a new date.

The following morning, I brought out that notebook and flipped to my notes and got to work, starting with Googling pictures of those Oneonta snowbanks that were in the Times Union last year, the 22' tall ones. My goal was to show the differences; the climate, the population [Guayaquil has more than 30 times as many inhabitants as Albany], the demographics, etc.; but also do it in a blatant, sort of funny way: I wasn't going to put in pictures of my house in August, I'd show it under 2' of snow. I wasn't going to show our mall vs. their mall, but instead represented their population with 15 stick figures and ours with half of one.

I worked for a couple hours without stopping, also including the Tulip Festival, the Egg, stuff that would keep them awake but would show them what we're about at the same time. I changed the backgrounds of the slides, put together animation, and when I was happy with it all, I burned it to a CD and wrote my name on the label, slipped it into a case, and saved a copy on the computer. I put together a cheat sheet and scanned it every few hours throughout the days remaining between me and my big night.

On Feb. 25th, I got a call from my counselor, Alicia. "Hola, Sabrina," she says, and she asks me what I'll need for my presentation. I tell her I need a computer and an InFocus [to project the slideshow] and a screen or some sort of backdrop to make it visible. She tells me no problem, asks me how my presentation is going, and says she'll see me the following night at 8:30.

The big night started out bad, which I guess I should have taken as an omen. I had to change my outfit 3 times and my banner from the Colonie-Guilderland club, even though I'd kept it rolled up for the last 8 months, was all wrinkled, and I couldn't think of a way to flatten it without ruining it. I took a deep breath, went over my notes, practiced what I was going to say, got myself some juice, and calmed down to a hand-jitter-less state.

Then, my host parents got home from their volunteer work at 8:31, leaving us negative 1 minute to get to the meeting on time. I sat in the back seat, sweating, rolling and unrolling the banner, muttering my presentation to myself.

I got to the meeting at 8:40, and the sliding doors were shut. I opened them with a horrible CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK and walked into the silent room, scanning it for my counselor... who wasn't there. The minute I sat down, a Rotarian called me out of the room to tell me the man who was going to bring the InFocus [the projector] couldn't make it. I let out a sigh of relief for another postponement until I realize he's still talking, telling me to wing it. "Good luck!" he says and walks back into the meeting.

I go back in and sit down. My chest feels tight. I sit staring at my disc and my cheat sheet and feel like I might cry, but I take a deep breath and wait my turn, thinking about the bits of information from the slideshow that wll still be worth sharing without the pictures. I don't have a pen and I can feel ideas coming to my mind and flying back out. I wait for what feels like an hour and then I am introduced as the exchange student "Sabrina.. Add-a-kiss" who will be telling them... about how my exchange year has been going so far. Huh?

I walk up and stand in front of the room and the words just seem to flow. I tell them Hello, my name is Sabrina, and I come from the United States, the state of New York but not the city. I tell them my father is a Rotary club president and I come from a big family, and then I tell them about working with the blind children and visiting impoverished families at Christmastime. I tell them about the Amazon and Quito and I tell them, not because I'd planned to but because I mean it, that my ear as an exchange student has been the most important year of my life, and that it has been an opportunity to grow and learn and see things, and I appreciate the opportunity so much. I say thank you and ask for questions. One rotarian asks me how I like the food and I tell him I love it, he asks me how I like the boys and we all laugh and he says "I mean, not me, of course, sorry, I'm married." I look around and realize they're all smiling at me, and it feels really good to be able to tell them how cool my year's been. I guess that means there was a happy ending!

Ooh ee, ooh ahh ahh....

.... ting, tang, walla walla bing bang!

Home from the amazon, and I will be the first to say it was the trip of a lifetime!

The trip started out thursday night at 8:00, when we [Kourtney, Rose, Karlijn, and I] boarded the bus to Quito. We rode all night which, in the rainy season, is not exactly a walk in the park; every time we finally nodded off, the bus rode over a gigantic pothole and we were back where we started from. We finally arrived in Quito around 5:30 or 6:00, freezing, feeling grimy, and ready for a nice warm breakfast. We stopped in Le Petit Cafe and got hot cocoa, grilled cheese, eggs, croissants, the works!

From there we boarded our little puddle-jumper plane with the other 12 exchange students en route to Coca. We stopped in Coca long enough to use the bathrooms and canoodle with the domesticated monkeys and birds, then got in the canoe for the 3 hour ride to Yachana, which in the native Quichua means "Learning". Upon arrival we wer informed by the head guide for our group, Juan, all the need-to-know basics about the trip: what hours we'd have electricity, powered by solar panels and biomass; meal times; towel and sheet rotations, etc. etc. We were also assigned our boots: Black rubber rain boots that we would be wearing daily for the duration of the trip.

The lodge itself was nothing like I'd expected. The other students said they were "cabins", so I expected candlelight and splintering floorboards and a hose in the shower, haha. I was reeealllly pleasantly surprised when we got to our room: 2 REALLY comfortable twin beds, a hot shower, ceiling fan, cubbies to hang and organize our clothes, and a small porch with a table and a hammock. The food was above my expectations, as well: Hot coffee and teas, granola with warm milk, fruit upon fruit, fresh juice, eggs and bacon and pancakes for breakfast, hot soups, rice, meat, and veggies for lunch, fruit cocktails for dessert, and heaping plates [with themes] for dinner: one night was what we believe was American Night, because we had chicken with barbecue sauce, potato salad, a garden salad with ranch dressing, and lemonade- YUM!

Much of the trip is a blur, a fun and fast paced and amazing blur. We hiked, long and hard, for a minimum of two hours a day and a maximum of five. We visited the nearby highschool, where the students learned not only english, math, and sciences, but also handcrafts, agriculture, and worked at the lodge, building steps on tricky parts of the trail, interning as tour guides and assistant cooks, screen-printed souvenir tshirts, you name it-they learned it. We watched a couple pan for gold; a backbreaking, low-tech job that earns $20 a gram... and the couple has 12 children. We ate bugs!, both living and roasted. We had a great balance of busy activities and downtime, which we spent swinging in the hammocks, playing carcds, doing our nails [of the 16 of us, 14 were girls], and relaxing in our beds. We made baskets and sang songs and taught the guides cardgames like Bullshit and Spit and got to know the other students a lot better at the same time. By the time we came home on Tuesday, we were begging to stay!

The canoe ride on Tuesday morning was shorter because we were going downstream. We arrived in Coca about an hour before our flight, puddle-jumped back to Quito, had lunch at Pizza Hut, and were on our way back to Guayaquil by 4:30. Unfortunately, because of the weather, the trip back was longer than it had been the last time we went, and we arrived at the Guayaquil terminal at 2 in the morning, exhausted and grimy all over again!

I'm glad to be back in Guayaquil, but glad at the same time to have had such a wonderful opportunity. It was definitely a highlight of the year!